


mortuus est rex (kongen længe leve)

by renaissance



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, POV Multiple, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-21 20:45:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17050271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissance/pseuds/renaissance
Summary: The King is dead. His nearest and their dearest gather at his side and talk of the future. (Long live the King.)





	1. Hamlet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elektra121](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elektra121/gifts).



> Happy yuletide, elektra121! The parts of your letter where you spoke of alternative character interpretations really caught my imagination, so I took that theme, placed it on a prequel scenario, and ran with it. I hope you enjoy what I've come up with!
> 
> Many thanks to Jo for beta & brainstorming, Emma for beta, Luca for help with the Danish in the title, and Adela, for hosting me while I wrote the bulk of this fic, i.e. letting me sit in your living room for a weekend and make screeching author noises.
> 
> For readers who fret about this sort of thing, I should warn you that this fic verges on anachronistic and ahistorical: not written in Shakespeare's English, set nebulously in the past, and based at Kronborg Castle as it currently stands, not the sort of place where old King Hamlet would've kept court. Also, though I chose to keep the focus of the fic gen, there is implied Hamlet/Horatio. To be honest, I think Shakespeare, a master of transformative literature himself, would have approved of all of this :)

Let us set the scene:

On a beautiful day at the height of summer, with clear skies, cool breezes, birds singing, I am the King of Denmark. Only where there are clear skies, cool breezes, et cetera, I am not. I am at Wittenberg for four such precious days when I am King, a King not yet crowned but a King nevertheless and with no subjects to preside over but my fellow students, who already look at me with what I flatter myself is fascination as I pass through their hallways and cloisters, who tease me in the classes that I manage to attend through the storm of my mourning and say to me, “Is it true you are the King now, Hamlet, the King of Denmark?”

I do not know what to say to them.

After those four days arrangements are made and we leave Wittenberg. We—myself and the other half of my soul, who has not once laughed at me about my predicament. He knew my father, and he is only sad that my father is departed from this world to begin on his ferry to the next; he does not find it funny that I am thrown onto the throne with no experience to my name and not even a complete education. Since he has come to Wittenberg with me, he leaves with me, after those four days where I should be by my father’s side.

Now enter the players:

We are brought to the stage by a carriage after an excruciating journey from another country, and at last Helsingør opens her arms to us, the sea in turn embracing her, azurine and glinting with a million diamonds at the crests of her waves. Helsingør, at least, knows my loss in all its intimacy. She welcomes us home.

Out there that cool breeze reigns—the very same that heralded my father’s passing; within our carriage there is no air, no light. I will not be sad to see the outside of this enclosed world, unlike my longing to be back at Wittenberg, which is already beginning to ache at my bones. It is too soon, I must stay and mourn, I know; I am dreaming of a world where it has not happened at all, a world where my father still writes me dreadfully dreary letters detailing affairs of state, and I write back to him to tell him that he bores me to death—it is uncomfortable to think of these now.

I am cut loose from the path my life ought to be taking. I say to Horatio, “You will stay with me. Until the funeral.”

He gives me a look that tells me I have said something out of order. I know he doesn’t like it when I boss him around but, I think, he is too fond of me to say otherwise. Eventually he says to me, “Yes, your majesty.”

“ _Yes, your majesty_.” He neither likes it when I boss him nor when I tease him, and as his face closes up, so does mine. I am sorry, though I cannot tell him so; besides he is right. “I suppose you must talk to me like this at home.”

This again is why I long to be back at Wittenberg, in my rooms—our rooms, most nights. I am free there in a way I can never be here. Now that I am King, and I have already missed four perfect summer days of being King, I must maintain a level of decorum with those close to me. I used to watch that distance on my father’s face, and try to study it, to emulate it; it is no surprise that I failed. He was a singular man and so worthy a King he may have stepped directly from an oil painting, drawn for the role. I look more like my mother; only a forger’s copy of the monarch.

I am dreaming of Wittenberg and then before I know it we are home. The castle looms so close I can already smell the old stone, the damp air rising from the casemates and the sea spray dashing against the outer walls. I love Kronborg more than I love myself, I think, more than I love my mother and father and Horatio, and of course Ophelia, but now I want to be anywhere other than here.

I reach out and join myself to Horatio by our hands. “I cannot face it.”

“I know,” he says to me. His voice has the low and comforting sound to it of boats rocking in the harbour, at the mercy of the wind.

He knows me as I know myself. I explain myself anyway: “It is that there is so much expected of me. I do not know how to be a king, Horatio, any more than I speak the tongue of Tartarus. Anyway, he will not come back and instruct me. I have no-one, no advisor I can trust. My uncle Claudius, perhaps, but what does he know of ruling?”

“You may comfort yourself,” Horatio says, flattering me a little too much, I think, “that you know more than he does.”

I grasp his hands more tightly; we are drowning and I will sink like the stones of Kronborg Castle if I let go of him. He is alarmed.

“We are a castle of fools,” I say. “Denmark will rot.”

The carriage stops. We have arrived, and something in the air tells me that the rot has already set in.

“Tell no-one,” I warn him. They cannot know of my concerns, my worries for the future. They must think I was created by the same artist as brought my father’s portrait to life.

Now the scene changes:

Here we are greeted by well-wishers. Well, they are wishing for my health only, but they greet us both, as Horatio is never far behind. I see faces I recognise and have been taught to name, though I do not trouble to look their way, as they have not cared this much for me until now. I see her, Ophelia too, who would not miss my return.

She looks at me now like I have caught the plague. I wonder that I look such a wreck of a man! I have been avoiding mirrors as I fear their curses, so I am not to know what I have become in the week since my father’s death—no, since news of his death. Like all things, curses are slow to travel.

She takes my hands. She does not meet my eye. “Welcome back, your majesty. We have been aimless in your absence.”

“I have been aimless,” I tell her, and my heart aches with it. “I am the raindrops from the cloud of parting, blown by a cruel wind. My father’s death has left me unmoored. I cannot bear the weight of it.”

As she raises her head I tilt mine downwards, to spare her the trouble of having to meet my empty eyes.

“Your loss,” she says, “is the kingdom’s loss, yet none can bear it as keenly as you, or your lady mother. May I take you to see her?”

We are looking at one another now.

I tell her she may. “Take me first to see _him_ —my father.”

“They are together.”

My heart races. Surely not? It has only been a week, surely if she were to take her life in grief she would have done it without delay? Even were a broken heart to have claimed her, I cannot imagine any way that this is so recent the news somehow passed me by. She wants to see me, I am sure of it. She has waited for me.

As I suspect, Ophelia clarifies: “She remains in this life, but ever at his side.”

I exhale.

She leads me forward. It is only once the coffin is in sight I realise he is not by my side. I turn back; “Where is Horatio?”

He steps forward, a flame in a crowd of moths, fluttering to be close to the other half of his soul; I in turn yearn to be near my father. “Here, _your majesty_ ,” Horatio says.

We smile at one another.

My smile falls when I look on the scene before me. Already the curtains are drawn on my arrival and I fear that we must go directly to affairs of state. My father lies still at the centre of the courtyard and the living interred with him are two knights, keeping watch for who knows how long, and my mother, and my uncle.  

I go to my mother. Her face is drawn and she avoids looking towards the coffin; this, I cannot understand, but then I imagine she has spent so many days by my father’s side that perhaps he has become grotesque to her, a decomposing sketch of his former self. I mourn my father; my heart aches for my mother, who must stay on this Earth despite his parting. I open my arms and she comes to me, and we hold each other; this is is all that is left of our family. The Queen and the King.

We are like that for some time. Then at last I release her and she looks at me with sadness in her eyes. I seek my father.

Someone has closed his eyes. His skin, though lacking its usual colour, is still stretched firm over his bones. He has been embalmed, I can tell by the smell, to prevent wasting. There is another smell that they cannot entirely dispel from the air, the putrefaction of his flesh. I am both fascinated by it and repulsed. I want to stay by his side forever. For a moment I imagine leaving the kingdom with only a Queen; I imagine joining him beneath the ground. I do not really want to, but I do not know what else to feel.

I must say it aloud, else I will not believe it: “So he really is dead.”

Someone speaks in the periphery of my awareness. I turn; it’s my uncle. My brain run backs over what he said, pieces half-remembered sounds together into a sentence: _If I may, your majesty_.

“You may.”

“You are young yet,” he says, “and you have many years as king ahead of you. I would not wish you to rush into rule with haste. Rather take time to mourn, to prepare before your coronation. I would counsel that you delay it as long as you see fit.”

As he speaks I feel a pain grow in my chest, my arms. He is trying to take my place.

“Should you give me cause to?” I ask.

“In some cultures,” my uncle says, “it is seen as the height of chivalry for a man to marry his brother’s widow.”

All my grief, all my days of mourning and my anger for being left in charge of this kingdom so suddenly, flows to my surface like the sea breaking below us, the currents of the bay and the roiling harbour. I kick the ground and unsettle my father’s resting place, though I know the knights will catch him. It is their job. I am effervescent for a moment; I force myself to calm. I will not let my uncle catch me thus.

I tell him so. “It is not for you to decide when I will be king.”

He is clever with his words. “It is not my decision to make at all. But your mother has agreed to be my bride.”

“He is not yet cold and in the ground.” I step forward, to challenge him. “You stand over my father’s corpse and desecrate him? At least wait until he is buried to squat on the dirt and take a—”

“Hamlet!”

My own mother. I turn to her. I cannot believe that she would betray me so; I know it is happening because she would not stand by and let my uncle—never my father—lie to me so plainly, but it is unlike her nature. It is the sort of thing someone might tell to me as a lie, to poison me against her. “Did you know? Your mother will marry your uncle and he will be King before you.” I would have taken that as the slander it was were it not being said now, before my eyes.

“You must not be angry at your uncle,” says the creature who has possessed my mother. “Nobody knew your father better nor loved him more dearly. Claudius will rule justly until you are ready to take the throne.”

“I fear that may not be for some time yet,” I say to her. “Your _majesty_.”

The usurper says to my mother: “Come, my dear, let us leave the Prince to mourn in peace. He is not yet ready to move on.”

He is poison. He has poisoned her mind. I find myself shaking, tossed by some intangible gale. I watch them leave. I am less a person than I was before I heard this news. My father lies beside me, less a person than a memory. I try to let his anger fill me, but I feel only despair.

I say to my father, “Do you hear that he calls me the Prince? I shall not be King until he is dead.”

“Do you want to be King?” Ophelia asks me. My mouth falls open as I look to her. I am about to say that of course I do, when she says soothingly, “I only mean to say that it is so much responsibility, and I imagine you will get bored.”

“That’s right,” Horatio says. So he is against me as well. “If you are only the Prince, you may stay here to mourn, and then in due course we shall return to Wittenberg and continue our studies in peace. Let your uncle take care of matters of state. You shall not have your youth taken from you.”

“I despise him,” I tell them both, though they are right.

Ophelia says, “But he will be your King.”

“And even when he is, you will be ours.”

Horatio has to say this, because he knows I will hate him if he doesn’t. Nevertheless I am not comforted; neither do I have any fight in me. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps it is better if I am not King. If I were King, I think, I could have my uncle killed for even suggesting such a ghastly solution to affairs. If I were King I could choose to go back to Wittenberg. Would that I were still there, that I had never left—or that I had not been gone when this happened, though I could not have stopped it even if I tried.

My companions take my arms and lead me away from my father; I do not fight them. Ophelia says, “Come, you are home. It is summer. Let us make the most of the season.”

It is the beautiful sort of summer day that poets immortalise, the sort of sky beneath which playwrights stage their comedies, but I am stuck in another kind of story.

Exit players. Curtains close. End scene.


	2. Gertrude

Gertrude stood by her late husband’s coffin every day since his death. At first they left the coffin inside, and now today they have borne it to the centre of the courtyard in anticipation of the Prince’s return. It was funny, she thought, that he looked so small. The cobblestones stretched out around his coffin and the castle rose up at all four sides, towering over them. In life he had been tall as a monument. The constant King. In death, she was all that remained of his rule. They married when he was Prince. She had been Queen as long as he had been King.

The kingdom would not pass to a Queen. It was not power she sought, anyway. It was only that she had never known anything else.

So. Claudius.

Today it was the two of them; Gertrude and Claudius, and two knights. It was a break from her lonely vigil. Claudius had spent his own time by his brother’s side; sometimes when Gertrude was there; sometimes, she suspected, while she slept.

In times of crisis it befit her to be steadfast as the moon. Though it cycled in and out of vision, some days bright enough to guide your path at night and other days not there at all, it was always the same cycle. Today Gertrude was a half-moon, seen but not illuminant, waning but never defeated, even in times of great tragedy. She could be a beacon for the kingdom while her son was still in Germany, waiting on the news which he had not known would come, and now while he travelled home.

The kingdom would not let her in charge and it would not run itself. If it were to be her son, who knew when he would be crowned? Yes, Gertrude thought, she had done the right thing. It was a heavy choice to have made, yet she would not unmake it even if she were given the chance.

She stood close by Claudius. He had always been kind to her. She did wonder if he had other motivations. He could not despise her if he wanted so dearly to marry her; he did not think of this solely as his duty. But had he loved her? Even before? She was not even sure that he loved her now. He was kind. That was enough.

“You are uneasy,” he said to her. “It troubles me.”

“I worry about Hamlet.”

“He will be here soon.”

“Yes,” she said, “and how will we keep this from him?”

Hamlet expected to come home to be King. Gertrude had, at first, expected to be Queen until he married, at which time she would step back. She knew this diversion from the preordained course of royal affairs would harm him. But what harm would it do, in the longer term, for him to rush into an unstable rule? It was better to postpone his reign for the length of another old man’s life. Certainly it was no crime to keep the moon settled in its orbit. This news would be hard for her unpredictable son to bear; it was hard enough for Gertrude, and she could tell it weighed on Claudius too, that his best course of action was so hasty to disregard his brother’s memory. It was an imperfect end to her late husband’s perfect rule. They could not make it any better except by striving as best they could to keep everything as it was.

Claudius was deep in thought. Then, an epiphany dawning on his face: “Why, perhaps we ought to tell him now.”

“Now? He will not be ready to hear it, and certainly not with his father lying before him. We must delay.”

“Delay of any sort is my enemy. That is not the kind of ruler I intend to be. No, I have made up my mind. We must tell Hamlet as soon as he is here. It is the only course of action.”

Gertrude did admire his decisiveness. If he might not love her, she certainly did not love him; she appreciated him, in a sort of proud, distant way. He was built like a knight and fought well—she had never failed to notice him in a tournament—and now she saw that he carried himself well as a statesman, too, as her late husband had done. She would not argue with him. Rather, she would see where he planned to steer this course of his. And if it hurt Hamlet, as it likely would, then she would be there to comfort him, as she always had been.

Here he came now, entourage in tow. Ophelia was by his side. Gertrude had never paid much mind to Ophelia, and for a long time she had thought only about the inevitability of Ophelia taking her place. Now, and since Gertrude knew that would not be the case, she had taken a sudden liking to the girl. She was sweet, and would make a kind, steady Queen; now Gertrude was almost sad that she would not be Queen for some time. She felt less sorry for Hamlet, who, as much as she loved him, would not rule well. Not as he was now.

Hamlet stepped out from the crowd and then stopped. “Where is Horatio?”

“Here, your majesty.” Horatio said this like a private joke between himself and the Prince. It would be miserable, for both of them, to learn that the Prince would not long fit his role as King.

Now that Hamlet was here he headed straight for Gertrude. She opened her arms and he came to her. She did not expect to cry—a week of mourning had seen to an abundance of that—but a few stray tears found their way loose from her eyes. In that brief moment she wondered how she could ever have thought that this boy would not be King. She had raised him for this; his father had raised him for this. His confidante teased him about it. Maybe she and Claudius had been wrong. Maybe he was ready.

Then he pulled back, and the illusion was lost. If death diminished the old King, he nevertheless outgrew the castle walls in comparison to the Prince.

Hamlet looked into the coffin. He stood by it and clung to it. In his eyes there was a conversation; Gertrude wondered what he and his father had to say to one another.

What Hamlet had to say to the rest of them was, “So he really is dead.”

“If I may, your majesty,” Claudius said.

Hamlet looked at him with rancour. Gertrude wished her son knew the truth of it, if only in that moment so she could touch Claudius, simply put a hand on his arm, to remind him to exercise caution when dealing with the Prince. Not only because of who he was; because he was mourning, and Gertrude knew all too well the way grief distorted the mind’s eye’s view.

“You may,” Hamlet said.

“You are young yet, and you have many years as King ahead of you,” Claudius said. This, Gertrude thought was wise. His next words, he spoke too plainly, too thinly covering his true meaning: “I would not wish you to rush into rule with haste. Rather take time to mourn, to prepare before your coronation. I would counsel that you delay it as long as you see fit.”

“Should you give me cause to?”

“In some cultures,” Claudius said, “it is seen as the height of chivalry for a man to marry his brother’s widow.”

Hamlet flew immediately into a rage. Gertrude had been afraid this would happen, yet she had known it would happen to spite her fears. Perhaps Claudius would pay more heed to her words in the future.

Hamlet turned on Claudius, accusatory. “It is not for you to decide when I will be king.”

“It is not my decision to make at all. But your mother has agreed to be my bride.”

His initial advice had been wise. Now, in this new light, it was tainted with condescension. She trusted Claudius; Hamlet trusted her; would that be sufficient to bring Hamlet to trust that, on this matter, Claudius had the right of it?

“He is not yet cold and in the ground,” Hamlet snapped. “You stand over my father’s corpse and desecrate him? At least wait until he is buried to squat on the dirt and take a—”

“Hamlet!” Had he learnt to speak so crudely this at Wittenberg? He certainly had not learnt it in Helsingør. “You must not be angry at your uncle. Nobody knew your father better nor loved him more dearly. Claudius will rule justly until you are ready to take the throne.”

“I fear that may not be for some time yet.” He spat these next words: “Your _majesty_.”

He had never spoken to her like this so long as he’d lived. Her shy, courteous son—who knew there was this awful side to him? It was injurious. Better, she thought, they see this side to him now than when he began his rule. And better that they delayed his rule as long as they could, to teach him patience, and courtesy.

“Come, my dear,” Claudius said to her, sensing her discomfort, “let us leave the Prince to mourn in peace. He is not yet ready to move on.”

Gertrude gave Hamlet one last, sad look before letting Claudius head her away by the arm. His touch had a reassuring firmness to it.

Quietly, she said, “You were right.”

“Now, my dear,” Claudius said, “he is mad with grief. He does not know himself.”

“I hope that is all it is.”

They were both silent, disconcerted, as they left the courtyard. Gertrude did not look back at her late husband in the coffin. There would be stability in Denmark for years to come. If Gertrude had to turn her back on him to make sure that happened, then so she would. She was the dependable Queen, the light side of the moon. Now she would wane, but her light would return, and the kingdom would follow.


	3. Ophelia

You are floating downstream on a current undisturbed. Around you grow green rushes and you watch them sprout on your course, watch them fly forth and reach for the sky. The bough of a fallen tree, white roses and lilacs, a garland of wildflowers to wreath your neck. You are dressed for your wedding, though you will not be Queen. The sky above you is grey. The omens are ill; they do not suggest that this endeavour will end in any success.

You are not there yet. This is where your journey begins.

Today, the sky is blue.

You have spent hours with the dead and now you are waiting for _him_ to return. You have even draped yourself in the night sky, because you know this is how you honour the dead. In a few hours you will be invisible. Now, the sun is up, and you are the only person there is.

You do not know how to feel about it. You loved the King, you think. He was kind to you. He was kind to everyone. The new King is not kind to you. He says he loves you but he casts you aside. You are not in love with him. You are in love with the role you have always played, his dutiful inamorata, left behind while he roams southward to study. You like the tragedy of it. The woman left behind. You do not mind it when he is not around.

Yet, as you watch his carriage climbing the gentle slope to the castle gates, you know you will be glad to see him. He is mourning, and though with Horatio he is never alone, he may find that company eases his suffering. You imagine yourself holding his hands, dipping your head in deference and saying, “Welcome back, your majesty.” He is the King now.

In this image he lets you hold his hands. He stands pliant before you.

“We have been aimless in your absence,” you say to him, wandering the halls like ghosts, howling in the night.

He agrees. “I have been aimless. I am the raindrops from the cloud of parting, blown by a cruel wind. My father’s death has left me unmoored. I cannot bear the weight of it.”

For a moment the picture is broken and you see him clear, as he is: a lost, pretentious boy, unable to do anything other with his grief than paint it in a dull grey. You see Horatio, standing behind him, and catch his eyes; you roll yours. It is the two of you, you both know, who will have to bear Hamlet’s suffering and ascension to the throne. He cannot do it alone.

“Your loss is the kingdom’s loss,” you say to Hamlet, “yet none can bear it as keenly as you, or your lady mother. May I take you to see her?”

“Yes,” he says. “Take me first to see _him_ —my father.”

“They are together,” you say. Now he looks at you like you have stabbed a dagger into his belly, and he has bled, bled, red on the stones, on his black clothes. You did not mean it like that, and are quick to make it clear what you really meant: “She remains in this life, but ever at his side.”

It is not your fault. You are not always of this world. Your mind and your mouth do not always agree. He seems to forgive you; then again, when can you ever tell what he is thinking.

You lead him to the coffin.

While you stood by the old King’s grave, you saw your new King lying there in his place, his young skin hanging loose on his skull and his mouth turned down in an eternal frown. He was beautiful, even in death. He had not died the same way as the old King, a sudden sickness. Your King will die with blood pouring from his chest and the life will fly out of him, it will light up the room.

You will not be there.

Now he is the opposite of light, which is not darkness but some void that draws from all around it, sapping vitality, and though you think he might use this to beam it back out and aid the sailors coming from Sweden at night, he chooses instead to hoard it all for himself. He will never use it—that’s the worst of it. He will keep that light to himself and tell you, one day, one day I shall show it to you, though he never will.

He finds his mother first, or she finds him. You join him at the coffin; now that he is standing here, he does not look so much like the corpse, or the corpse does not look so much like him. You can tell that they are father and son. Which is which flickers back and forth. Your eyes cannot focus on it.

You are elsewhere. You are not in the ground or boxed in by wood, you wear no coronet. You float among the flowers, the green, the green, the green. You cannot see the sea from the castle courtyard. It is so far from here to the river.

You hear the new King when he speaks next: “So he really is dead.” He has been looking at himself in the mirror.

“If I may, your majesty,” Claudius says.

His voice is like a knife. Hamlet is not expecting it. Horatio, poor man, is not expecting it, and looks like he might step in Hamlet’s path and take the knife to his breast in Hamlet’s stead.

“You may,” Hamlet says.

Claudius delivers a sermon. You do not pay attention. Your father delivers sermons all the time and you are far too used to ignoring them, where your brother takes them in like they are his first course at a feast. Something makes it to your ears, and shocks you: “... I would not wish you to rush into rule with haste… I would counsel that you delay it as long as you see fit.”

“Should you give me cause to?” Hamlet asks him.

You look at the Queen and think, _oh_.

“In some cultures,” Claudius says, “it is seen as the height of chivalry for a man to marry his brother’s widow.”

You think Hamlet may really be the rain clouds, the storm. Now he breaks, a deluge. You may drown here if you are not careful.

“It is not for you to decide when I will be king,” he says.

“It is not my decision to make at all. But your mother has agreed to be my bride.”

You look at the Queen again. She is beautiful though she is old. She has not faded a day. Black suits her; a black veil frames her golden hair, black beneath her eyes and at their hearts. Her black pupils widen. She is regal. You can imagine Claudius loving her. You love her yourself, the way you loved her husband. You had thought they would be your parents one day, and that would be no loss on your part.

This is not about her beauty. You see in her eyes that it is about power. Not hers. His.

“He is not yet cold and in the ground,” Hamlet says to his uncle, blustering with the storm’s strong wind. “You stand over my father’s corpse and desecrate him? At least wait until he is buried to squat on the dirt and take a—”

“Hamlet! You must not be angry at your uncle.” You note that the Queen says _your uncle_ ; not yet your father, not yet the King. “Nobody knew your father—” your father, the King, “—better nor loved him more dearly. Claudius will rule justly until you are ready to take the throne.”

“I fear that may not be for some time yet. Your _majesty_.”

You wish he would not talk like that, to his own mother. Can’t he see this is not her doing?

Claudius does not help the situation, addressing the Queen with affection and bidding her to follow him away. “Let us leave the Prince to mourn in peace. He is not yet ready to move on.”

The storm abates, but there are flurries still. Hamlet is rent in pieces by it. You watch him fall apart and scatter on the wind. He says, “Do you hear that he calls me the Prince? I shall not be King until he is dead.”

“Do you want to be King?” you ask him. He gives you that look again. You are not good at this. “I only mean to say that it is so much responsibility, and I imagine you will get bored.”

Horatio is a good man; he takes your side. “That’s right. If you are only the Prince, you may stay here to mourn, and then in due course we shall return to Wittenberg and continue our studies in peace. Let your uncle take care of matters of state. You shall not have your youth taken from you.”

“I despise him,” Hamlet says.

“But he will be your King,” you tell him. You are only telling him the truth. It makes him so unhappy that you wish you had lied.

“And even when he is,” Horatio says, “you will be ours.”

Theirs. You like that. Your Prince.

You step forward and take his arm; as though in a reel for three Horatio takes the other. You lead him away from the coffin and do not let him look back. Neither of you can make him happy, but you can help.

You see him standing over the river and looking down at you as you drift away, and that is enough.

“Come, you are home. It is summer. Let us make the most of the season.”


	4. Claudius

My brother lay in a coffin, and I was the one who put him there. It was I who found his body, lifeless, and I carried him to the physician. He was not hard to carry—it seemed that all the weight had left his bones along with his essence. I lay him on the table where he was to be embalmed; I could not bring myself to be parted from him. And finally I lifted him into the coffin, shut his eyes, and crossed his arms over his chest, peaceful in his eternal sleep.

Of course, I had also killed him.

It was the sort of death that looked natural. The sort of poison that left no trace. I cannot even begin to talk of the effort on my part to procure it; I am overwhelmed by the memory. Suffice to say that I went to great lengths to bring this about.

The _why_ of it is less complicated. I simply thought—and still think—that I would be a better King than my older brother. Oh, he was a _good_ king. That was the problem. He was too lenient; too merciful and never just enough. He would rather sit someone down for a good talk and a goblet of mead than chop their head off, have an example made of them. This did not reflect well on the kingdom. We were weak, and the Norwegians were already looking for holes in our armour. Skilled in battle he might have been, but that skill had long since faded. Denmark needed a younger man at its helm, and I do not mean Prince Hamlet.

I did not do it out of hatred for the Prince, nor did I do it out of love for Gertrude, though I did love her; I would have to have been blind not to. I remember when she first came to court, her golden hair waiting for its crown, her pink cheeks and lips coloured like a sunset. I said to my brother, you are lucky. He was never so crude as that; he said that he was only doing his duty by marrying. Curiously, when I killed him, I was not thinking of how much better a King I would be: I was thinking of how he had disrespected his future wife that day; though certainly he had come to love her, he did not marry for love. I thought about how I was not going to marry her for love either, but how I would still do better by her than he had.

I slipped him the poison. He died.

Now Getrude was by my side as we mourned the old King. She did not know; she would not marry me if she knew. I know at least that she would agree I made the better King. After some years of rule, she would understand.

Her gaze was downcast. I said to her, “You are uneasy. It troubles me.”

“I worry about Hamlet,” she said. This was only natural; we all worried about Hamlet. That she had chosen this moment to air her concerns… well, it was inopportune, but he was her son, I suppose.

“He will be here soon,” I reassured her.

“Yes,” she said, “and how will we keep this from him?”

I did not want to keep it from him. I was tired of keeping our engagement to ourselves. I wanted the people of Denmark to know, and I wanted them to cheer for their new King. I pretended to think about it for sometime, and then, as though surprised, I said, “Why, perhaps we ought to tell him now.”

“Now?” Gertrude was troubled by this, as I had expected. “He will not be ready to hear it, and certainly not with his father lying before him. We must delay.”

“Delay of any sort is my enemy. That is not the kind of ruler I intend to be. No, I have made up my mind. We must tell Hamlet as soon as he is here. It is the only course of action.”

I was sure I would persuade her with my strong speech. Never mind, though, I did not have time to discuss it with her further: the Prince arrived with a large retinue of mourners, including his friends. I had not wished to tell them so soon, but even the most well-thought out plans, devised by a keen strategist such as myself, were liable to go awry. I would adapt to the changes and adjust my actions accordingly.

The Prince had eyes only for his mother and his father. He went to his mother first, and I held my tongue. I would let them have their moment of sentimentality. I was not wholly unsympathetic; I had mourned for my brother too, though in my case it was that I mourned for the man he had been, not for his passing. The Prince went to his father next. He stood by the coffin and stared down like these were the depths of the waters around the castle: bleak, unfathomable. There was tension in his eyes but he comported himself as befit his station; I was impressed by him for, I think, the first time in my life.

“So he really is dead,” the Prince said.

I saw my opportunity. “If I may, your majesty.”

He did not look pleased by my intrusion. I would not let that trouble me. Through clenched teeth, he said, “You may.”

“You are young yet,” I said, “and you have many years as king ahead of you. I would not wish you to rush into rule with haste. Rather take time to mourn, to prepare before your coronation. I would counsel that you delay it as long as you see fit.”

“Should you give me cause to?” he asked.

I knew he would not be pleased. “In some cultures,” I said, “it is seen as the height of chivalry for a man to marry his brother’s widow.”

“It is not for you to decide when I will be king,” he said. Now his composure began to fall; this was the Hamlet I expected to see.

“It is not my decision to make at all,” I said. “But your mother has agreed to be my bride.”

That was that. The Prince had no power over me now that I had involved Gertrude. I chanced a look at her; she was upset with me for this, I knew, but she would not be for long.

“He is not yet cold and in the ground,” the Prince said to me. “You stand over my father’s corpse and desecrate him? At least wait until he is buried to squat on the dirt and take a—”

Now, Gertrude proved she was on my side: “Hamlet!”

I pursed my lips, holding back an amused smile. I almost wanted Hamlet to finish that sentence.

“You must not be angry at your uncle,” Gertrude continued. “Nobody knew your father better nor loved him more dearly. Claudius will rule justly until you are ready to take the throne.”

Now I let myself smile, though I was no longer amused. I had a loyal ally in Gertrude. Prince Hamlet did not know the half of his mother’s worth. He had already turned on me, but it was better we got this out of the way as soon as possible. I watched him turn on his mother. She would not like it. She would learn to appreciate what I had done for her once Hamlet adjusted to the shock.

“I fear that may not be for some time yet,” he said. “Your _majesty_.”

No King would ever talk thus to his mother. She was hurt, and I did not like to see her so. “Come, my dear,” I said, “let us leave the Prince to mourn in peace. He is not yet ready to move on.”

I wanted the Prince to see that I cared for her. If he was overcome with guilt for talking to her as he had done, then that would be well and good. I only cared that he learnt to shut his mouth and treat his King with the respect I was due.

“You were right,” Gertrude said, as we departed.

I knew. I often was.

“Now, my dear,” I said to her, “he is mad with grief. He does not know himself.”

Better that she did not think I was so set against the Prince. For all his faults, she loved her son. It was Gertrude’s good opinion I valued more than anyone else’s.

She said, “I hope that is all it is.”

Yes, that would be it. Madness, for now, and in time that might solidify into something akin to resentment. Prince Hamlet would never be content with me as King; perhaps he would come to appreciate that his mother remained Queen. But my Queen did not look back at the coffin as we departed.

Though I had not been crowned, the kingdom was already mine.


	5. Horatio

That summer had carried an unseasonable chill, like ghosts were wandering the halls of the University at Wittenberg. Arriving back at Helsingør, looking up at the castle through the windows of their carriage as they passed through the town, he thought he saw ghosts, following Hamlet all the way. Horatio felt so sorry for him in a way that he could not articulate.

Hamlet was dressed all in black, for mourning. His eyes, too, the dark circles beneath them, spoke to nights spent in devotion. Horatio knew; he’d been in Hamlet’s rooms at Wittenberg more nights than not, but after news reached them of the old King’s death Hamlet had barred him. This was three nights. On the fourth, once they had made plans to return to Helsingør—it was not so easy, sorting things out with their classes at Wittenberg, with the new King’s mode of transport home, and for Horatio himself, convincing all and sundry that it was right for him to return to Helsingør as well—Hamlet finally came to him, and asked, Won’t you spend the night with me? Horatio had obliged, and entered the rooms to find a shrine built by the window, dozens of candles burning on every surface. Though Hamlet could not join his father, and would not, he had made his best attempt to have him in the room.

At last they left. It was three days from Wittenberg to Helsingør, including two overnight stops and one boat on the final morning. Horatio could not say he had missed Helsingør, nor that he was pleased to be back. He understood that this was where Hamlet needed to be, beside his mother in her time of need. He understood that this was where _he_ needed to be, beside Hamlet, holding that particular thread down while the rest of the tapestry unravelled.

Their carriage was quiet as the grave.

“You will stay with me,” Hamlet said. “Until the funeral.”

He never asked questions; although he was a kind, aware prince, he was nevertheless a prince, used to people following his commands. Horatio wondered how he would be now that he was a King.

“Yes, your majesty.”

“ _Yes, your majesty_ ,” Hamlet mocked. Abruptly his expression turned morose. “I suppose you must talk to me like this at home.”

Kronborg drew nearer, and Horatio wished to be further away. The castle lay across a moat that flowed out into the harbour, a harbour that joined a sea either side and Sweden in the middle; it was like it floated in the middle of everything and belonged nowhere in particular. Perhaps that was why Horatio hated being here so much: it was the most beautiful feat of architecture and engineering he had seen, and it was no place at all.

Their carriage was to take them all the way up to the castle. As it made the final climb, Hamlet reached across the seats and grabbed Horatio’s hands in his. It was only the two of them, nobody to witness this moment of vulnerability—as, no doubt, the new King would like it. But here he had a wild look in his eyes for Horatio’s eyes only, a terrible grieving panic.

“I cannot face it,” Hamlet said.

“I know.”

“It is that there is so much expected of me. I do not know how to be a King, Horatio, any more than I speak the tongue of Tartarus. Anyway, _he_ will not come back and instruct me. I have no-one, no advisor I can trust. My uncle Claudius, perhaps, but what does he know of ruling?”

“You may comfort yourself that you know more than he does.”

Hamlet’s grip tightened, too-long nails digging crescent moons into pen-worn hands. “We are a castle of fools. Denmark will rot.”

Horatio might have said something reassuring to that; their carriage drew to a standstill and, with the haste of a man caught with dagger in hand, Hamlet flew backwards, hitting the back of the seat with a _clunk_. He looked out the windows and seemed to withdraw, like a flower turning its head from the sun at night. It was natural, Horatio thought, and well-justified, that he himself might mislike Helsingør; it was not fair that Hamlet should feel such aversion to the seat of his kingdom.

“Tell no-one,” Hamlet said frantically.

Horatio did not know what he meant. He would, nevertheless, say nothing.

They opened the doors for the King at the bridge over the moat. There was a party assembled in their mourning blacks to receive him, eyes downcast. Horatio watched through the window of the carriage as the doors opened and slowly, so as not to disturb the scene, heads were raised, eyes were strained to get a glimpse of their new ruler. Most of them were people Horatio could not have named, servants of Helsingør and nobles of the surrounding cities, people who no doubt the old King had loved dearly and assumed that their standing would be none diminished with the new.

From the party Ophelia stepped forward.

Presently Horatio followed Hamlet from the carriage. He had already allowed Ophelia to take his hands; there was a glassy look to her eyes and her face was pale as though she had not been sleeping. She did not look as though she had been crying. Nor did Hamlet. They were the picture of royalty, the King and his future Queen. Calm even in a time of crisis. No, not calm—professional. Trained players on a stage the size of a kingdom.

“Welcome back, your majesty,” she said, bowing her head, her fine hair falling about her drawn face like the waters of the moat. “We have been aimless in your absence.”

“I have been aimless,” Hamlet said. Horatio wished he could see his expression. “I am the raindrops from the cloud of parting, blown by a cruel wind. My father’s death has left me unmoored. I cannot bear the weight of it.”

Ophelia looked at him, then over his shoulder at Horatio, and subtly rolled her eyes. Turning back to Hamlet, she said, “Your loss is the kingdom’s loss, yet none can bear it as keenly as you, or your lady mother. May I take you to see her?”

“Yes,” Hamlet said. “Take me first to see _him_ —my father.”

“They are together,” Ophelia said. Hamlet’s face must have done something extraordinary; though he did not speak, Ophelia hastily added, “She remains in this life, but ever at his side.”

Horatio was glad for the diversion. They stepped forward, Hamlet and his guard, Ophelia, then Horatio, so far back he might have been part of the crowd of mourners. They walked through to the castle courtyard, stone beneath spires and a bright sky. At the centre lay an open coffin; there had been no rain from which to shield the body, and around it stood two knights at watch, the Queen, and Claudius. Horatio stood back with his equals until Hamlet turned over his shoulder and said, “Where is Horatio?”

Summoned, he stepped forward. “Here, _your majesty_.”

They shared a smile.

Then Hamlet turned to embrace his mother, and the moment was lost to Horatio. He stood to one side behind Hamlet, Ophelia to the other. Claudius stood behind the Queen and did not meet any of their eyes. His attention seemed to be fixed on some point in the distance, some bright star that the daylight obscured.

It was an uncomfortably long moment until anyone spoke. How could they, with the King that still ruled their hearts and minds lying stiff between them? Horatio did not dare look at the old King. This felt like a moment for the family, and their associated nobility, people like Ophelia; Horatio did not want to intrude. Instead he watched Hamlet’s back, as Hamlet’s thin fingers gripped the edge of the coffin and a ghastly pallor spread from his knuckles to his wrists. He bent over double, reaching to look his father in the eye, but not to touch. He was so slender, so worn by travel and tears. Now he did not cry. His shoulders did not shake.

“So he really is dead,” Hamlet said at last.

“If I may, your majesty,” Claudius said.

Hamlet turned to look at him. Horatio was standing a few paces back, yet still between them; he was a soldier who had wandered, in his confusion, right to the heart of no man’s land.

At length, Hamlet said coldly, “You may.”

“You are young yet, and you have many years as King ahead of you. I would not wish you to rush into rule with haste. Rather take time to mourn, to prepare before your coronation. I would counsel that you delay it as long as you see fit.”

“Should you give me cause to?” Hamlet asked, and Horatio felt a stone sink to the pit of his stomach; he and Hamlet both understood what Claudius implied; a glance at the Queen indicated that she had come prepared for this conversation.

“In some cultures,” Claudius said, “it is seen as the height of chivalry for a man to marry his brother’s widow.”

Hamlet kicked at the ground; the coffin shook on its dais. The two knights rushed forward to steady the old King, disturbed by the state of affairs even in death. Horatio found himself stepping forward, at hand to handle Hamlet if he had to. But Hamlet stilled, and seemed to teeter on the spot before speaking: “It is not for you to decide when I will be King.”

“It is not my decision to make at all,” Claudius agreed. “But your mother has agreed to be my bride.”

“He is not yet cold and in the ground. You stand over my father’s corpse and desecrate him? At least wait until he is buried to squat on the dirt and take a—”

“Hamlet!” The Queen spoke at last. “You must not be angry at your uncle. Nobody knew your father better nor loved him more dearly. Claudius will rule justly until you are ready to take the throne.”

“I fear,” Hamlet said, “that may not be for some time yet. Your _majesty_.”

“Come, my dear,” Claudius said to the Queen—and he must have known that nothing would make Hamlet like him less—“let us leave the Prince to mourn in peace. He is not yet ready to move on.”

Now Hamlet’s shoulders shook. Ophelia was looking at him with a hopeless expression in her eyes, a face that mirrored Horatio’s heart; they both wished there was something they could do to help, he was sure, but these were matters in which they would never be permitted to intervene. This was the cost of being so devoted to one so far above their station.

When the Queen and Claudius were gone, and they remained with only the taciturn knights, Hamlet said, “Do you hear that he calls me the Prince? I shall not be King until he is dead.”

“Do you want to be King?” Ophelia asked, and Hamlet turned to her sharply. She continued: “I only mean to say that it is so much responsibility, and I imagine you will get bored.”

Horatio picked up on this: “That’s right. If you are only the Prince, you may stay here to mourn, and then in due course we shall return to Wittenberg and continue our studies in peace. Let your uncle take care of matters of state. You shall not have your youth taken from you.”

“I despise him,” Hamlet said.

“But he will be your King,” Ophelia said. Her voice was sad, and far away.

“And even when he is,” Horatio added, “you will be ours.”

All the energy seemed to leave Hamlet then, his shoulders falling downcast and his gaze anywhere but on the coffin. Without communicating, Ophelia took one of his arms, and Horatio the other.

“Come,” she said, “you are home. It is summer. Let us make the most of the season.”

Whichever sun shone on the Prince, though, this was not that season. They left the old King behind. Horatio looked at Hamlet and thought, _long live_.


End file.
